What is this?

This is the blog section of the PURE Reform website. Please leave your thoughts and comments here.

PURE Reform has created this blog as a forum for parents, teachers and community members to share information and voice concerns regrading the reform process in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. Although we would like to foster constructive dialogue, PURE Reform does not edit content. The views expressed by bloggers in this forum are not necessarily views held by PURE Reform.

To comment on an existing topic, go to the line at the bottom of the post for that topic that begins "Posted by..." That line will list "1 comment," "2 comments," etc. Click on "comments," then leave your comment in the box provided. To post as Anonymous, no registration is required, OR you can choose an identity.

To suggest a new topic, go to this month's post labeled "Start a New Post" and add your comment (as described above) about the new suggested topic. PURE Reform will use these comments to start new posts.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

EFA PSSA goals- four year results

PURE Reform's summary of the results for the district's PSSA goals for the 2004-05 to 2008-09 period has now been posted. Go to the Featured Topics tab of purereform.com and click "Excellence for All Goals: Results".

The summary shows that 6 of the 19 PSSA goals were met and that 5 of the 6 successful goals were for 8th grade.

4 comments:

The results show that the only EFA goal for gains in the percentage of students proficent or advanced was 8th grade reading. The EFA goal was for a 20 percentage point increase and the actual increase was 21 percentage points. The 8th grade has a higher level of students at the proficient or advanced level in reading (71%) than any other grade and a lower level of students at the below basic level in reading than any other grade.

While this is good news from the eighth grade, it raises the question of why multimillion dollar literacy efforts are to be focused on the middle school age group.

As always, it is nice that purereform does this legwork for us all. For sometime now the administration has been trumpeting the successes of the 8th grade PSSAs. 2008 and 2009 results make one wonder why the ARRA dollars will be invested so heavily in middle grades as Questioner mentions above. I can only think that the momentum gained in the middle grades can only be sustained if ARRA dollars create the "routines and rituals" needed to carry students to the next PSSA year in 11th grade.

There does seem to be room for alternate/ focused investigation of public school issues.

An well-developed example is "The Philadelphia Public School Notebook." Its website http://www.thenotebook.org/ gives this history:

"Fifteen years ago, a group of concerned parents, teachers, and community members founded the Notebook to be a resource and voice for people working for equality and quality in Philadelphia's troubled public school system. These pioneers saw a void in the local media landscape and filled it with a free quarterly newspaper, raising money from individuals and foundations and maintaining high journalistic standards while pursuing a mission of educational change."

- According to the NYT, The Notebook recently received a $200k grant from the Knight Foundation.

As a teacher who understands the times, let's just say that the publication seems to be a good idea if for no other reason that there is safety in numbers. Most teachers--and apparently a goodly number of parents--feel that the current group of people in charge not only frown upon dissent, but would seek to punish those who make commentary in some way. Perhaps the time has come for a publication like this.Every so often, we tend to forget which nation we live in.